One of the common ways for controlling the power to a load is to couple an optically coupled isolator to a load triac, the load triac serving the function of a switch between a source of AC power and the load. A device such as a phototriac is coupled to the gate of the load triac and functions rapidly to serve as a switch and give isolation. In prior art designs, the same AC power source that is connected to the load triac is also connected to the gate triac. With presently commercially available components, a gate triac is capable of operating at a voltage of 115 volts or less. When larger voltages are used, such as 220, there is a tendency for the gate triac to experience voltage breakdown. Previous attempts to overcome this problem involved putting two gate triacs in series with one another to reduce the effect of voltage. This proved unsatisfactory.